Government of Pakistan releases Pakistan Economic Survey 2018

Government of Pakistan releases Pakistan Economic Survey 2018

Pakistan’s economy continued to maintain its growth momentum which has been building up since FY 2014. The GDP growth had reached the lowest level of 0.36 percent in FY 2009 and thereafter it remained volatile with an average of 2.82 percent between FY 2008 and FY 2013. Since FY 2014 Pakistan’s economy has been witnessing an impressive turnaround with GDP growth crossing 4 percent in a challenging environment. Despite these challenges, the government remained committed to achieve higher, inclusive and sustainable growth and adopted wide ranging structural reforms in all sectors of the economy. Consequently, the growth momentum started picking up and the economy started expanding with broad based growth across different sectors. During first three years of the present government, real GDP growth remained above 4 percent while for last two consecutive years, it remained above 5 percent.

The government has focused on a number of initiatives to enhance productivity in all sectors of the economy. For agriculture, efforts were made to provide better supply of quality seeds including hybrid and high yielding varieties along with timely availability of agriculture inputs including fertilizer, pesticides. Further, there was a 197.6 percent growth in credit to agriculture sector, which reached Rs 1,001 billion (budget estimate) in FY 2018, compared to Rs 336.3 billion in FY 2013 along with, relief of Rs 341 billion provided to the farmers under Prime Minister’s Kissan Package. All these measures helped in achieving 13 years high growth of 3.8 percent in agricultural sector during 2017-18.

The government had also shown commitment to industrial sector including manufacturing by providing undisrupted energy supply, higher infrastructure spending, ample liquidity in the banking sector and investment friendly low interest rates. Efforts were made to develop vibrant and competitive markets in order to accelerate and sustain economic growth through productivity, competitiveness, innovation and entrepreneurship. These were some of factors that fueled for accelerating growth of large scale manufacturing (LSM) in particular and industry in general. During FY 2018, Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) recorded an impressive growth of 6.13 percent which is the highest in eleven years. On the back of it, overall industrial sector growth improved by 5.8 percent which is highest in ten years.

Over the last four decades, the composition of Pakistan’s GDP has undergone considerable change as the share of services sector in GDP has increased. The government remained committed in providing business friendly environment in order to attract foreign investment in the country, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a milestone in this regard. In 2017-18, services sector maintained the growth momentum by recording a growth of 6.43 percent.